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Radiotherapy - History and Applications Wiki
About us Eryk Ratajczyk - First year Natural Sciences student, taking Statistics, Physics and Chemistry for the foundation course. Gabriela Silva - A Portuguese first year BSc Natural Sciences student at UCL, incredibly curious about Medical Physics and its applications in cancer treatments. Quan Gao -A first year Natural Sciences student at UCL, who really likes biology and math. Really enjoy exploring new things in radiotherapy. Unik Limbu - A Nepalese born, first year Natural Sciences student at UCL who is really interested with travelling and trying out different foods from all around the world. He is also enjoys learning Physics and is incredibly interested in the Medical Physics field of Physics. Introduction Data collect around the world shows that cancer is the second highest cause of death, having killed around 8.9 million people in 2016.1 In an attempt to circumvent this deadly disease, several forms of treatment have been developed throughout the years, like chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy, which are used in different cases to better suit the treatment of a specific type of cancer. In this Wiki page, we’ll discuss radiotherapy, which is a treatment that uses radiation to kill cancer cells by damaging their DNA’s and preventing them from proliferating through the body. This form of treatment can be used to try to cure localized cancer, make other treatments more effective or simply alleviate the pain for the patients. There are three types of radiotherapy: external beam radiation therapy, brachytherapy and radioisotope therapy; which are used in different situations as recommended by a doctor and spread over many sessions. In external beam radiation therapy, beam sources that are external to the body are aimed at the tumor to stop its growth. Meanwhile, brachytherapy is an invasive treatment that places a sealed radioactive source near the cancer and radioisotope therapy is applied through radionuclides either injected or ingested. 2 Radiotherapy uses a range of different types of radiation that better suit each patient according to different locations, sizes and types of cancer. Gamma rays, X-rays, high energy electron, neutron and proton beams and photon therapy, are some of the types of electromagnetic and particle radiation used in treatments. 3 Even though there is a range of different options to treat cancer, the number of people dying due to the disease is alarming, so there’s still research going on to improve and develop new treatments that will be more effective in the battle against cancer, which we’ll discuss in this Wiki page. A brief history of radiotherapy Radiation treatment began after the discovery of x-rays by Roentgen in 1895, only a year later used to treat a patient with breast cancer by Emil Grubbe. In 1896 Becquerel began studying radioactivity and natural sources of radiation. In 1898 Marie Curie and her husband discovered radium as a radiation source. Three years later Becquerel and Curie reported the physiological effects of radium rays. In the early 20th century many studies reported the medical use of x-rays. Skin cancers were typically treated. In 1913 William D. Coolidge invented the Coolidge tube, an improved x-ray tube capable of producing higher energy x-rays, allowing for deeper tissue penetration than what present x-ray sources allowed for. His basic design is still in use today. Due to the lack of knowledge of the adverse effects of x-rays, treatments often caused more harm than good, however studies began into the safer use of x-rays in medicine. In the 1920s physicians began to understand that administering a fractional dose would lead to fewer and less severe side effects. 1 Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2018) - "Cancer". Published online at OurWorldInData.org.Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/cancer' Resource 2] Gelband, H., P. Jha, R. Sankaranarayanan, and S. Horton, editors. 2015. Cancer. Disease Control Priorities, third edition, volume 3. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0349-9. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO 3 Gianfaldoni S, Gianfaldoni R, Wollina U, Lotti J, Tchernev G, Lotti T. An Overview on Radiotherapy: From Its History to Its Current Applications in Dermatology. Open Access Maced J Med Sci. 2017;5(4):521-525. Published 2017 Jul 18. doi:10.3889/oamjms.2017.122 References 1 Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2018) - "Cancer". Published online at OurWorldInData.org.Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/cancer' Resource 2] Gelband, H., P. Jha, R. Sankaranarayanan, and S. Horton, editors. 2015. Cancer. Disease Control Priorities, third edition, volume 3. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0349-9. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO 3 Gianfaldoni S, Gianfaldoni R, Wollina U, Lotti J, Tchernev G, Lotti T. An Overview on Radiotherapy: From Its History to Its Current Applications in Dermatology. Open Access Maced J Med Sci. 2017;5(4):521-525. Published 2017 Jul 18. doi:10.3889/oamjms.2017.122 Category:Browse